Huffyuv is the codec you should /ideally/ be using in this program. Lagarith doesn't work properly on most days in WMM. Sometimes Xvid/DivX does work but depending on the phase of the moon it varies -_-;
All in all though, you should be using huffyuv as it is a lossless codec i.e. better image quality is preserved.
If you Read ErMaC & AbsoluteDestiny's Friendly AMV Guides it will show you how to encode in huffyuv. It might be a little hard to understand at first, but after doing it a few times it gets easier. ^.^

Excuse, but why shouldn't I use Xvid/Divx files? I've successfully made 5 AMVs with them(not on here at the moment) and the only reason I can see why not to use them is the watermark which can easily be taken out.

Kumatora wrote:Excuse, but why shouldn't I use Xvid/Divx files? I've successfully made 5 AMVs with them(not on here at the moment) and the only reason I can see why not to use them is the watermark which can easily be taken out.

- They use temporal (inter-frame) compression, which requires that the editor process not just the frame requested but all the frames to which it refers... this isn't good for stability or frame accuracy
- They've already been through a round of significant compression from their original source (be it a DVD or a captured TV broadcast), which means that your finished distro file is going to look significantly worse than if you'd used DVD footage straight (or compressed with a lossless codec such as HuffYUV)

I'd be able to give you a whole page on it, except that amvwiki.org is kind of gone.

Kumatora wrote:Excuse, but why shouldn't I use Xvid/Divx files? I've successfully made 5 AMVs with them(not on here at the moment) and the only reason I can see why not to use them is the watermark which can easily be taken out.

- They use temporal (inter-frame) compression, which requires that the editor process not just the frame requested but all the frames to which it refers... this isn't good for stability or frame accuracy- They've already been through a round of significant compression from their original source (be it a DVD or a captured TV broadcast), which means that your finished distro file is going to look significantly worse than if you'd used DVD footage straight (or compressed with a lossless codec such as HuffYUV)

I'd be able to give you a whole page on it, except that amvwiki.org is kind of gone.

Kumatora wrote:Excuse, but why shouldn't I use Xvid/Divx files? I've successfully made 5 AMVs with them(not on here at the moment) and the only reason I can see why not to use them is the watermark which can easily be taken out.

- They use temporal (inter-frame) compression, which requires that the editor process not just the frame requested but all the frames to which it refers... this isn't good for stability or frame accuracy- They've already been through a round of significant compression from their original source (be it a DVD or a captured TV broadcast), which means that your finished distro file is going to look significantly worse than if you'd used DVD footage straight (or compressed with a lossless codec such as HuffYUV)

I'd be able to give you a whole page on it, except that amvwiki.org is kind of gone.

O RLY? I can see a little quality decline but nothing major. Mostly, it's just slightly darker. Also, does this only apply to DIVX MPEG-4?

No. Any type of MPEG compression (MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4, etc.) uses temporal interframe techniques. This includes all the MPEG4 'flavors' like DivX, XviD, 3ivX, H.264 (AVC), etc. Same goes for similar video compression like WMV7/8/9 (VC-1), Real Media, VP6/7 and all other modern-day high-efficiency video codecs.

Recommended editing codecs like Huffyuv, Lagarith, DV, and MJPEG all use intraframe compression where each video frame is compressed within itself without depending on other frames for data. This results in every frame being a Keyframe and provides frame accuracy when editing.

On the quality side of the equation is getting the best, lowest-generation source for footage. Lossy codecs like MPEG1/2/4, WMV7/8/9, etc. in addition to being interframe codecs, take another hit by permanently throwing away video data to achieve higher compression. If high enough bitrates are used, the amount lost can be minimized to hard-to-perceive levels or enough so it's not objectionable. But given that most available downloadable material (fansubs and raws) must balance filesize versus quality, there is inevitably some quality lost as a compromise. The more rounds of compression, the worse the resultant video will look.

A good analogy of lossy compression is this: think of a video as a nice flat sheet of paper, say the size of a page of a newspaper. It's easy to read and write (edit) on and stays flat on the surface of a table for accuracy. Unfortunately, it's size makes it hard to carry and move around. So what can we do? Well, we can fold it up to make it more compact (compression). But now we have permanently lost the paper's flatness and the creases make it harder to write on it properly, not to mention read some of it. The more you fold, the smaller the area the sheet takes up, but the more creases you get. What if we wanted to have another flat sheet again? Well, we unfold (decompress) it and we can make a photocopy of the original (such as it is, and assuming that this photocopier is a super-makes-perfect-copies-exactly-as-it-scans-them copier). This copy, is nice and flat, but now we have remnants of the folding embedded in it. We can reduce the visibility of some of these compression effects by adjusting the copier settings (filtering) which may affect the visibility of the writing on the page also. Now imagine if we repeat the compression-decompression-copy steps a few more times. Or re-fold that original sheet in a different way (re-compression).

Now lossless compression? It's like rolling the paper up into a tube. It takes up more space than folding, but doesn't leave permanent creases. You can unroll it and it (and done correctly) is as flat as before the rolling.

And this doesn't even factor in the effects of colorspace conversions...

Willen wrote:A good analogy of lossy compression is this: think of a video as a nice flat sheet of paper, say the size of a page of a newspaper. It's easy to read and write (edit) on and stays flat on the surface of a table for accuracy. Unfortunately, it's size makes it hard to carry and move around. So what can we do? Well, we can fold it up to make it more compact (compression). But now we have permanently lost the paper's flatness and the creases make it harder to write on it properly, not to mention read some of it. The more you fold, the smaller the area the sheet takes up, but the more creases you get. What if we wanted to have another flat sheet again? Well, we unfold (decompress) it and we can make a photocopy of the original (such as it is, and assuming that this photocopier is a super-makes-perfect-copies-exactly-as-it-scans-them copier). This copy, is nice and flat, but now we have remnants of the folding embedded in it. We can reduce the visibility of some of these compression effects by adjusting the copier settings (filtering) which may affect the visibility of the writing on the page also. Now imagine if we repeat the compression-decompression-copy steps a few more times. Or re-fold that original sheet in a different way (re-compression).

Now lossless compression? It's like rolling the paper up into a tube. It takes up more space than folding, but doesn't leave permanent creases. You can unroll it and it (and done correctly) is as flat as before the rolling.

Did you come up with that on your own? 'Cause that's probably the best analogy for compression I've ever heard, and it makes a lot of sense.

Hey still new to AMVs and Window Movie Maker(WMM). I suck at using them simply becuse I learned how to use Final Cut and not the crappy but free WMM. DO NOT SAY THAT WINDOWS SHOULD BE EASY FOR ME. I will come to your house and remove your body inch at at time. That is the reason I'm no allowed in Canada anymore. Now do you know if it is possible to create a image with a blue background and work it like the text in WMM? Now if you are confused by what I'm asking the deal is if you have the text in a color other then blue when place below the audio track and music layer you have the text over the video playing. I'm wondering if it is possible to perform the same task you can do with text with images in WMM?

MawTheKiller wrote:Now do you know if it is possible to create a image with a blue background and work it like the text in WMM? Now if you are confused by what I'm asking the deal is if you have the text in a color other then blue when place below the audio track and music layer you have the text over the video playing. I'm wondering if it is possible to perform the same task you can do with text with images in WMM?

Is this what you are asking.. can we put pictures on layer 5, video on layer 1 and titles on layer 5 as well..?
The answer is no. Video and pictures can't be put on layer 5 (unless you code a new tittle sequence in xml) or there is some other weird ass trick that i'm missing.
You cannot have more than 1 "image" layer in this program... check out some of the *pip effects there's a link in the FAQ page 1.... some of them come close to what you are after ... sort of...not really